Makeup is applied to transform actor F. Murray Abraham into Salieri in the 1984 film Amadeus (Photo: ShotOnSet!)
Watching a filmed story is a complex act involving sensations, emotions, and ideas. From its birth, film absorbed photography, painting, theater, drama, fiction, poetry, sculpture, architecture, dance, and music. Add to these a moving camera, instantaneous shifts in space and time, and complex interactions of words, sounds, and images, and film becomes a unique art form.
Jack Jorgens, professor emertius in the department of literature at American University, looks at scenes from some of the best screen works, asking what constitutes style in film and how cinematic expression works. He explores how the images and sounds that wash over viewers are chosen, written, designed, shaped, and performed.
Featured Topic
Shakespeare vs. Film
When Shakespeare meets the screen, the result can be a collision or a fascinating journey on the borders of film and theatre. Look at Macbeth’s encounter with witches as Shakespeare wrote it, then as envisioned by Akira Kurosawa in Throne of Blood and Roman Polanski in Macbeth, each with a different cinematic mix of prophecy, fate, irony, fear, and evil.
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